Dictionary.com (2019) defines the verb teaching as "to impart knowledge or skill; give instruction" and learning as "the act or process of acquiring knowledge or skill."
When I was in high school and even while completing my student teaching, my experiences with teaching and learning were just that. The teacher was there to impart knowledge to the students. Most of my classes were done through direct instruction and the students were there to absorb the information that the teacher had to give. While this method works for some students, it often feels like it is more about teaching than learning.
Since then, there has been a shift in education to create a student-centered classroom. This allows the student to take a more active role in their learning. I came across an article by Martha Kennedy (2015) that really helps put it in perspective. She says there is an "essential difference between teaching a skill and teaching content. You can tell people content; people must practice skills. To learn a skill, students must be directly involved. No teacher can stand there and tell the students how to do something and expect the students to leave the classroom able to do it."
So what I am really wondering is why should I make the change in the way I foster the relationship between teaching and learning in my classroom?
Yoram Harpaz, wrote a paper titled Teaching and Learning: Analysis of the Relationships in which he discusses how teaching is derived from learning and since our research about how we learn has changed, we should change how we teach to better suit our students. "In short, the cognitive science enlightened us about the nature of learning and the conditions for its growth, and all we – the educators – should do from now on is to derive rules for teaching from the nature and conditions of learning – to 'built education from the bottom up.'"
Our ultimate goal as teachers is to give students the skills they need to be successful in life and "the main virtue of the student centered classroom is that it removes mastery from the sole province of the teacher and allows students to be masters, too." (Kennedy, 2015). So to me, it only makes sense to change the classroom dynamics so that students are taking a more active part in their learning.
Resources:
Dictionary.com. (2019). Retrieved June 20, 2019, from https://www.dictionary.com/
Harpaz, Y. (n.d.). Teaching and Learning: Analysis of the Relationships. Retrieved June 20, 2019, from https://yoramharpaz.com/pubs/en_learning/teaching-and-learning-analysis.pdf
Kennedy, M. (2015, March 06). Student Centered vs. Teacher Centered Learning. Retrieved June 20, 2019, from https://medium.com/synapse/student-centered-vs-teacher-centered-learning-2184a7521720
When I was in high school and even while completing my student teaching, my experiences with teaching and learning were just that. The teacher was there to impart knowledge to the students. Most of my classes were done through direct instruction and the students were there to absorb the information that the teacher had to give. While this method works for some students, it often feels like it is more about teaching than learning.
Since then, there has been a shift in education to create a student-centered classroom. This allows the student to take a more active role in their learning. I came across an article by Martha Kennedy (2015) that really helps put it in perspective. She says there is an "essential difference between teaching a skill and teaching content. You can tell people content; people must practice skills. To learn a skill, students must be directly involved. No teacher can stand there and tell the students how to do something and expect the students to leave the classroom able to do it."
So what I am really wondering is why should I make the change in the way I foster the relationship between teaching and learning in my classroom?
Yoram Harpaz, wrote a paper titled Teaching and Learning: Analysis of the Relationships in which he discusses how teaching is derived from learning and since our research about how we learn has changed, we should change how we teach to better suit our students. "In short, the cognitive science enlightened us about the nature of learning and the conditions for its growth, and all we – the educators – should do from now on is to derive rules for teaching from the nature and conditions of learning – to 'built education from the bottom up.'"
Our ultimate goal as teachers is to give students the skills they need to be successful in life and "the main virtue of the student centered classroom is that it removes mastery from the sole province of the teacher and allows students to be masters, too." (Kennedy, 2015). So to me, it only makes sense to change the classroom dynamics so that students are taking a more active part in their learning.
Resources:
Dictionary.com. (2019). Retrieved June 20, 2019, from https://www.dictionary.com/
Harpaz, Y. (n.d.). Teaching and Learning: Analysis of the Relationships. Retrieved June 20, 2019, from https://yoramharpaz.com/pubs/en_learning/teaching-and-learning-analysis.pdf
Kennedy, M. (2015, March 06). Student Centered vs. Teacher Centered Learning. Retrieved June 20, 2019, from https://medium.com/synapse/student-centered-vs-teacher-centered-learning-2184a7521720
Good post. I agree that teaching is tied to learning. How we learn and learned directly effects how we teach. As we have learned how learning takes place, are we changing how we teach? If we do not do that, how can we expect our next generation of teachers to change how they teach?
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